Light This Candle The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman

"Alan was really kind of a loner" Alan Shepard confounded people. He angered, intimidated, and embarrassed them; insulted, taunted, or--worst of all--ignored them. Yet for all his maddening iciness, people were drawn to him, because just beneath his cold shell was an intelligent, curious man who could be charming, hilarious, warm, inviting, generous, and even sexy. There was no way to anticipate which of Alan Shepard's personalities would emerge on a given day: aloof and remote one day, buying you drinks the next. Possibly the only consistent aspect of his character was its unpredictable duality. That and the obsessive drive to be, as one astronaut put it, "better than anyone else." At every stage of his life, Shepard's effect on family, friends, and colleagues was that of a competitor in a hurry, constantly lurching forward, with no stomach for delays or incompetence. He was attracted to people with something to offer, those with skills, information, or money who could help him achieve his goals. But if you had nothing to offer, "you'd better get out of town," said one longtime friend. "He was hard to get to know. But once he put his arm around you, you knew he was there," said astronaut Deke Slayton's wife, Bobbie. "If you were a friend of Al's and you needed something, you could call him and he'd break his neck trying to get it for you. If you were in, you were in. It was just tough to get in." Shepard's frenetic, unreadable personality churned behind a pair of wide, wild eyes, his most prominent facial feature. Googly, buggy things. Heavy-lidded, they distended out from deep sockets. When he wasn't smiling--he could ignite a huge smile, too, with long, askew teeth framed by meaty lips--it was the eyes people noticed first. Icy blue and intense sometimes, other times warm and watery, but always open wide. Throughout his life, friends and family spoke of the "infamous stare" Shepard could inflict. Confidence, smarts, ego, anger, hunger all poured through his bulgy eyes. But, like mirrors, they worked only one way, giving nothing back. Behind the mirrors burbled a mysterious stew of contradictions. He was swaggeringly cocky, often referring to himself in the third person or as "the world's greatest test pilot." And yet he could be humble and self deprecating. Despite a notorious impatience, Shepard also displayed an attention to detail that earned him key assignments as a Navy pilot. "He didn't do anything until he had studied it, tested it, and made damn sure he could do it," said James Stockdale, a onetime test pilot colleague of Shepard's. In the cockpit of an airplane, Shepard flew with confidence, without fear, always in control, and with an uncanny spatial awareness that can't be taught. "He could fly anything," one colleague said. Another called him "the best aviator I've ever known." But Shepard also had a persistent habit of infuriating superiors by flouting Navy rules, flying dangerously low over beaches, beneath bridges, and upside down. He was "flamboyant" and "indulgent," growled one former supervisor. Though his flamboyant indulgences once took him to the brink of a Navy court-martial, those same flinty qualities earned him a spot as one of the nation's first seven astronauts. "He was an egotist" and "a typical New Englander . . . hard, cold," said one NASA official, Chris Kraft. "But he was all business when it came to flying." When he joined the other Mercury Seven astronauts, the same question constantly simmered: Who was Alan Shepard? One astronaut considered him "bitterly competitive, to the point of being cutthroat." Another once accused Shepard of "swindling" him in a business deal. And one astronaut's wife said Shepard "really didn't want to have anything to do wiThompson, Neal is the author of 'Light This Candle The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America's First Spaceman', published 2004 under ISBN 9780609610015 and ISBN 0609610015.